Movie · 2025 · Science Fiction, Adventure, Drama · 1h 47m · R · Korean
Curator score: 0.9/10 (196.9K ratings)
The last day on earth. The one choice for survival.
Overview
When a raging flood traps a researcher and her young son, a call to a crucial mission puts their escape — and the future of humanity — on the line.
Ratings
Curator score: 0.9/10
IMDb: 5.4/10
Letterboxd: 2.51/5
TMDB: 6.0/10
Director
Kim Byung-woo
Production
Hwansang Studio Seoul
Cast
Kim Da-mi, Park Hae-soo, Kwon Eun-seong, Jeon Hye-jin, Park Byung-eun, Lee Hak-ju, Yuna, Park Mi-hyeon, Lee Dong-chan, Kwon Min-kyung, Kim Dong-young, Kim Kang-bin, Eun Su, Ahn Hyun-ho, Lee Jun-hyeok, Kim Su-kyung, Seo Suk-kyu, Cho Seung-yeon, Park Ji-won, Choi Sung-hyuk
Where to watch
Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A high-concept disaster thriller with a sci-fi twist, but it seems to split viewers between those who enjoy its emotional ambition and those who find the genre shift and plotting frustrating. Best approached as a speculative mother-child survival drama rather than a straightforward flood movie.
Best for
Viewers who like twisty Korean genre films
Fans of emotional sci-fi with a survival framework
Audiences open to ambiguous, puzzle-box storytelling
People who enjoy disaster setups that become something more cerebral
Skip if
You want a clean, conventional disaster movie
You dislike narrative ambiguity or heavy exposition
You prefer grounded realism over speculative sci-fi
You are looking for a straightforward emotional tearjerker
Overview
The Great Flood starts like a disaster film and then pivots into something far more speculative, which is both its main draw and its biggest risk. The premise of a researcher and her son trapped by rising water gives it immediate urgency, but the film seems more interested in memory, repetition, and engineered emotion than in spectacle alone.
Worth noting
That ambition will work for some viewers and alienate others. The popular response suggests a movie that asks for close attention and rewards interpretation, but also one that can feel overcomplicated or emotionally manipulative if you want a simple survival story. Its strongest appeal is the combination of intimate maternal stakes with large-scale sci-fi ideas.
Bottom line
If you like Korean genre cinema that bends expectations and treats disaster as a doorway into bigger philosophical questions, this is worth a look. If you mainly want waves, rescues, and cleanly explained stakes, it may be a frustrating watch.
Top Letterboxd reviews
lowryn (2.5★) · 4889 likes
this is basically jus propaganda in a desperate attempt to save korea’s plummeting birth rate and make people feel maternal instincts
Likhith (3★) · 4482 likes
for an artificially created kid, ja-in is the dumbest bitch alive
excovidal (4.5★) · 3341 likes
the type of film where u need a 100% of your brain and critical thinking in order to get it. If you want a typical disaster movie, this isnt it.
For those that didnt get it — The first escape was real, everything after that was a simulation (thats why the number in her shirt kept changing, thats the amount of times the experiment was conducted) in order to create experience and emotions for the mother. They needed both a… more
theyo theyo (1.5★) · 3191 likes
the kid is so annoying it made me wish someone would just throw him into the water